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How to use OpenLearn Create

Adding Activities

3. Forum

The Forum provides a discussion forum facility for your course. The forum activity is likely to only be used in a tutor supported course.

If you set up a forum you will be
responsible for moderating it and closing it when it is no longer
required. You must not set up a forum in
a perpetually open course (no start and end date) which is not going to be
monitored regularly by someone.

Step 1:

In your course, turn editing
on. Click on ‘add an activity or
resource’. The ‘add an activity or
resource’ box will appear. Under ‘activities’
select ‘Forum’.

This will tell you that ForumNG
is a replacement for standard Moodle forum with most of the same features plus
additional ones and a more dynamic user interface. NG stands for 'Next
Generation'.

Click on ‘add’ then complete the ‘adding
a new forum’ form.

You must provide your forum with a name.

Step 2:

Select the Forum type
- Different types of forum are available for specific purposes or teaching
methods. The standard forum type is appropriate for all normal use. Choose one of the two options:

Standard forum for general use (default)

Study advice (only see own discussions)

Step 3:

The forum introduction is where you explain to the learners
what the forum is for and how to use it.
It may also be a good place to mention basic forum etiquette.

Step 4:

Decide whether learners can
subscribe to the forum via Email
subscription - You can force everyone to be subscribed, or set them be
subscribed initially; the difference is that in the latter case, they can
choose to unsubscribe themselves. These
options include all users (students and staff) who are enrolled on the course.
Users who do not belong to the course (such as administrators) can still optionally
subscribe.

Everyone can choose to be subscribed

Force everyone to be subscribed

Everyone is initially subscribed

Subscription is not permitted

Step 5:

Maximum attachment
site - This is the maximum total size for all attachments on a
single post.

Email for reporting offensive posts - If this email address is
supplied, then a Report link appears next to each post. Users can click the
link to report offensive posts. The information will be sent to this address. If this email is left blank then the Report
feature will not be shown (unless a site-level reporting address has been
supplied). More than one email address
can be added so long as they are separated by a semi-colon

Enable anonymous
moderator posts (default is unchecked) - Allows users that have postanon
capability to make their post anonymous by hiding their name from students.

Enable discussion
tagging - Enable tagging in discussions for this forum and also allow forum
wide tags to be enabled.

Step 6:

Decide if you are going to allow
learners to rate forum posts.

Allow posts to be rated - If enabled, forum posts can be given ratings using a numeric or
defined Moodle scale. One or more people can rate the post and the displayed
rating is the average (mean) of those ratings. If you use a numeric scale up to
5 (or fewer) then a nice ‘star’ display is used. Otherwise it’s a dropdown. The
capabilities system controls who can rate posts and see ratings. By default,
only teachers can rate posts, and students can only see ratings on their own
posts.

You can also set a time period when posts can be rated.

Required ratings (default is 1) - If you set this option to 3, then the rating for
a post will not be shown until at least 3 people have rated it. This can help
reduce the effect of a single rating on the average.

Step 7:

Decide whether there will be any grading attached to
learners writing in the forum by choosing the type of grading behaviour from
the drop down box (the default is No Grade):

No grade

Teacher grades students

Average of ratings

Count of ratings

Maximum rating

Minimum rating

Sum of ratings

Grade - if you
select this option, a grade for this forum will be added to the course
gradebook and calculated automatically. Leave this off for a non-assessed
forum, or one you plan to assess manually. The different ways to calculate
grading are fairly self-explanatory; in each case, the grade for each student
is calculated based on all ratings for all posts they have made. Grades are
limited to the scale; for example if the scale is 0-3, the grading method is set
to ‘count’ and the student’s posts have received 17 ratings, their grade will
be 3.

Step 8:

Limit posts - You
can choose to limit when learners can post to the forum using the limit posts
setting, which has date fields.

Limit user posting - This option limits discussions and replies made by students
(specifically, any users who do not have the mod/forumng:ignorethrollling capability). When a student is only permitted 3 more
posts, a warning displays in the post form. After their limit runs out, the
system displays the time at which they’ll be able to post again.

You probably will not need to touch the Common module
settings unless you are using groups.
You can ignore Restrict access unless you need to add a restriction.

Step 9:

Click on Save and display.

The forum will appear.
It will include various buttons for learners, including one to start a
new discussion and various buttons which you the moderator can use, including
one for forum usage.

You can edit the settings for the forum in the ForumNG administration
menu.

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